For those interested in the gaming side of F1, the official F1 game by Codemasters has had a revamp for 2010 and was unveiled in London this week.

The game, due out in September, will be the first official F1 game to appear on the Xbox 360 platform and will be back on PC. It is also available for Playstation. The new game is also designed for HD consoles.

The game is developed in Birmingham and uses the same proprietary technology as Colin McRae and DIRT 2.

Last year’s game, the first by Codemasters after years of the contract being exclusively with Sony, has been a big hit in the Allen household on the Nintendo Wii.

My five year old is extremely proficient on it, especially around his favourite track Interlagos, where he would give Felipe Massa a run for his money. He seems to have developed a soft spot for driving Force India cars, perhaps due to the colour scheme.

I’m not much of a gamer, but I’ve lost count of the number of times I have toiled around to finish outside the top ten while he has made a break for it in the lead and won the race.

It’s a great game for the non-expert player, the graphics for the tracks are uncannily accurate and the only criticism I would make is that the rotating front wheels look a bit naff compared to the quality of everything else. We haven’t got into the finer details of car handling, which are built into the game, whereby grip levels change with rain or tyre marbles. But my youngest has certainly had a lot of fun on car damage settings, where you can knock wings and nosecones off.

I wasn’t able to attend Wednesday’s launch, so I haven’t played the new game yet, but I’ve got an open invitation to go up to Codemasters and will do so before long, to take a look.

This weekend we will be doing a few laps of Albert Park to reacquaint ourselves with how it goes ahead of next Sunday’s Grand Prix there. Luckily for me there are no safety cars in the game, as I would be sure to trigger one…

I’m looking forward to this game. I have a PlayStation 3 and as a result, the only F1 game out there at the moment for me is Formula One Championship Edition – unfortunately the teams and drivers are outdated – thats really the only issue with it, as it’s based on the 2006 season.

It was disappointing to discover that F1 2009 had only been released for the Nintendo Wii.

Graphically, F1 Championship Edition is stunning – hopefully this new offering from Codemasters will be also.

Nice one James, the Playstation game back in 1995/96 did a lot to first get me interested in F1! I’m incredibly envious of your upcoming trip to Melbourne, I was back over there a couple of weeks ago but unfortunately not able to stay on for the grand prix. Managed to do a lap of Albert Park while they were putting up the fences and grandstands etc, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLtq8bgGZdw
Couldn’t go too fast though!

Blimey, I remember playing on that game constantly for months. According to some now well buried websites, I was the world record holder for fastest lap around Hockenheim, something like 1:38:10…how sad I still remember!

James, are you going to be commentating practice sessions on OneHD just like Peter Windsor did last year? You were my favourite commentator (despite what those Murray Walker and BBC fans might think) and that’d be nice to have you again.

OneHD is an Australian free-to-air sport-only digital TV channel. It’s available in every major Australian city as long as you have a digital TV or set-top box. Lot’s of motorsport incl. live F1, Nascar, FIA sportscars, MotoGP etc etc PLUS Australian Rules football, soccer, muy thai, IPL cricket and more…cool station. Who needs pay TV?

Thanks mate, enjoy your time in the Schumacher stand. I sat there the last time I went to the Aussie GP in 2003, used to sit in the Fangio stand otherwise. I’ll be up at something stupid like 3am to watch the practice session on BBC, I’ve got a 6 pack of VB specially for the occasion!

I’ve been looking forward to this game so much. It’ll be great to have an F1 game with the new rules (although I bet incorporating those rules must have been a nightmare for Codemasters).

When you do check it out James, could you note how much of the new rules they have put in the game (such as the penalties for engine changes and using more than the allotted engine amount) and also if they use the latest FOM TV graphics and how they use them?

The funny thing is the front wheels look a bit naff even in real life! The TV cockpit shots are like those films of people with cameras attached in front of their heads, which stay weirdly still while everything else moves. Not sure what the game designers can do to alter that. Game looks good though.

Great article James, those in the know say I started racing games at the age of 4, by the time I was 10, a store manager used to chase Me off the because I used to win all the money for going far and winning. However, it was an F1 racing game. Then it went to 8 bit home systems to sega and now im 32 and still hungry to be the best.

This game will be the biggest for F1, however, i always feel emotional driving that Red Ferrari and the engine screaming to get pole on final seconds, I always race full distances too.

Somehow I always wondered why I was attracted to Ferrari at a young age and racing it on games.

A Ferrari is like being attracted a beautiful Woman who is absolutely perfect and only to find you have no answer to describe her. It is what has attracted Me to F1 and racing games.

The images for the game look fantastic. Will you be writing an article after your visit to Codemasters James?

Will definitely be investing in this come September.

I remember there was one F1 game released which made an attempt at introducing the safety car into the gameplay, think it was F1 99 on the original Playstation. As far as I remember it didn’t work very well though.

Have you ever been approached to do the commentary on a game such as this before James?

I found commentary on the F1 Championship Edition to be very useful – when you’re racing round a track the last thing I want to be doing is scanning the screen for other drivers positions. The regular updates from James and Martin were handy!!

Murray Walker on the original F1 game for the playstation was hilarious. ‘SUPERLATIVE!’ ‘OOHH OOHHH OHHH!’
I expect the ‘commentary’ will be occasional soundbites from your pitcrew. If they could make that really good then maybe you wouldn’t need commentary. Instead of just, ‘Pit this lap’ things like ‘You need to keep within 3 tenths of Massa to jump him in the pits’ or something that detailed would be good.
Really looking forward to the game. The version on the Wii is really not good enough, prefer a F1 board game my Dad gave me from the seventies…

Thank God for no commentary. If Legard were to be on the game I would probably just park the car at turn 1 and take the disc out snap it in half and throw it out of the window. I will be honest and say I wasn’t your biggest fan whilst you were commentating, but you were a legend compared to Legard. You know more than him, you are more interesting than him and you actually sound like you are enjoying and passionate about the race that is unfolding around you.

James I think your old commentary partner Martin did a great job with Legard last year -it must have been difficult!
I remember that farcical race at Indianapolis a few years ago, 6 cars on the grid, your commentary with Martin made the race pass really quickly, it was excellent.

Anyway back to the game – I still think the game will suffer without commentary. The thrill of hearing Brundle say, “You’ve done it! You’ve taken the maximum 10 points in a truly momentous win!” is great!

I know most sports games with commentary can suffer from being repetitive, but I would like to have had it on there.

Nice read as usual James. However when you say “The new game is also designed for HD consoles.” you seem to be a little missinformed. The current generation consoles are the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PS3. Out of the three only the 360 and PS3 have HD resolution support. So when you say the game is available for the xbox, ps3 and hd consoles you are being redundant. Cheers.

I understand. No big deal. I think the point is that the current Codemasters F1 2009 game is only available for the PSP and Wii, none of which are HD. The upcoming 2010 game will be in HD for the PS3, 360 and the PC.

By the way, have you had any experience with rFactor and the many F1 mods?

I feel GT5 prologue with the F2007 ferrari on suzuka is simply the BEST f1 experience on any console in recent memory! looks spectacular, handling is sublime and you can really get a feel for the car and pump in those lap times!

Funnily enough i got into F1 due to the original games on the playstation all those years back – for me f1 ’97 was the greastest f1 game ever made!

if only polyphony digital would aquire the license in the future,for a true f1 experience, however i suppose we have all those historic f1 cars to look forward to in gt5 – i hear theres quite a few licensed!

I still have F1 2005 by Sony for PS2. It was OK but the lack of online play really meant it got quite tedious after a while. Plus the damage system was poor.

I hope this has online mode and a proper damage system like Race Driver: Grid, another game by Codemasters. James if you visit the Codemasters HQ can you ask them if/when they will start to make the next football manager game for consoles? The last one was LMA Manager 2007, that’s the last football manager game I bought. Others such as Football Manager and Championship manager are too complicated and slow. Thx.

Slightly off piste to this article, but just wanted to know your thoughts on engine equalisation. Over the winter Renault increased the power of their engine, and now the FIA has also allowed equalisation measures relating to cost and reliability. Power and reliability are/were the achilles of their unit, by allowing this to happen aren’t they now putting Ferrari at quite a disadvantage? Mercedes is economic and has the most power, Ferrari have the most thirsty engine and Renault can’t be too far off their horse power now, but far more efficient. Yes Ferrari worked with Shell on this area, but presumably other teams did the same.

Following Bahrain commentators made the observation that Red Bull was better on the soft tyres where as Ferrari were quicker on the hard compound. However is this just reflective of Ferrari starting with 10kgs more fuel and handing a 0.4sec a lap advantage to Red Bull early in the race, where as later on the fuel loads would become closer?

If Renault’s power plant does improve, have you heard anything or would you envisage Ferrari seeking some form of equalisation themselves?

I think that there is a lot of misinformation around about this. Over winter 08 into 09 Renault were allowed to equalise their engine, but not over last winter. The FIA left it up to the teams to agree and they didn’t. As for the story on Autosport yesterday about Renault being allowed to equalise the engine now, I rang Renault to check and they said that they have no idea what they are on about. Nothing new has been done. When the FIA receives a request from an engine builder to make changes for reliability reasons, all the other engine builders are informed first.

Thats what I thought, but I read the following where Ted Kravitz has seemingly suggested this, but he could be misquoted or misunderstood and simply be referring to the previous winter as you point out.

As you say it may be misinformation, but reports suggests that its Red Bull and not the Renault team calling for this, but either way Renault would know if a equalisation request has been put in. I guess this maybe another thing to take with a pinch of salt, but I have read several stories that Red Bulls problem with Vettels car might be more serious than the spark plug reported…may be no substance to it but interesting nonetheless.

Autosport didn’t say anything about equalizing the engine:
“Renault has been given approval to make a ‘large’ number of improvements to its engines for cost and reliability reasons, AUTOSPORT has learned”

Changes for reliability reasons are usually allowed. Ferrari and Mercedes have made lots of changes under that term too.

Further to my post last week, Ron Dennis on ESPN has now also suggested that there may be a design issue with the Red Bull which caused the failure in Bahrain. Possibly a small fuel tank or higher fuel consumption than expected which set the electronics into fuel save mode. I’m guessing if Ron Dennis is quoting this then he must have it on reasonably good authority, interested to know whether its something which you’ve heard from your contacts? With different races requiring different fuel laods do you envisage this being a factor in Melbourne would you say?

I have been waiting for this game for what seems like ages! September is still a while off, so I’m still doing laps in the older F1 Championship edition on ps3.

The game looks amazing, there is a developer vid on the codemasters.co.uk website. The footage looks to good to be true. The pit crews look very realistic. Let’s just hope it’s as good as it looks…..codemasters are ace at what they do, but as an f1 fan and gamer, I do prefer sim over arcade and codies last few efforts have disappointed many.

It helps that they have input from one Anthony Davidson.

Roll on September, I personally can’t wait.. Let’s also hope melborne is a better race than the season opener!!!

I hold that motorcycle racing games are tops because there is an added dimension of balance not to mention the inherent beauty in their movement. Once the skills are mastered the inner struggle between allowing aggressive choices and disciplined precision begins. Thus I share that mental experience with my brother racers in the material world.

Thanks James, I find it hard to apply no-TC issue in the game especially for PS3. The PS3 analogue is already very sensitive and you can not press throttle slowly same with real throtter pedal, thus I suspect we will keep driving with TC in this game.

I will be glad if you ask or experience this one in your Codemasters visit.

I’d agree with you James. The Wii version is very accessible for kids and adults alike and unfortunately, like you, I have been comprehensively thrashed by my ten year old son. When you do get to Codemasters can you find out if an update for the 2010 season will appear for the Wii? I have very fond memories battling with a friend on his Atai ST version of Crammond’s “Grand Prix” game which based on the 1991 season. With a wheel and pedal set and no fuel stops it was awesome. Thinking of gaming and sims I remember hearing Stirling Moss being asked on a radio phone in (late eighties I think) about the usefulness of racing sims in developing a racing brain in young drivers and he roundly pooh poohed the idea. Funny how a couple of decades later the teams are now running massive car simulators to help train junior drivers and test car developments. Keep up the great work on the blog.

There’s a lot of respect here for the old PC titles such as Grand Prix 2 etc, but no one is talking much about the awesome games put out by Sony, from the Liverpool Studio developers. I’ve played all those titles (featuring a certain familiar lead commentator!) and found them to be far and away the best F1 games out there. The last title they made, F1 Championship Edition was a superb launch title on the PS3, frankly I’ll be impressed if Codemasters can beat its graphics.

I think the details on the career mode sound good, but what I’d really like would be the ability to export and upload replays to youtube and the like, for sharing with fellow F1 fans.

Once thing is for sure, when the game does come out, it wont be the same without you and Martin being on there! Good to hear you at the post-race interview on Sunday btw, I guess that’s the closest we’ll get to hearing you on the BBC. Just not the same!

great to see comments, however, im disappointed by the lack of commentary, its there in FIFA games, wrestling also excels in commentary, i dont know whether the powers that be in F1 have imposed some restriction, there were all these issues in the past like engine sounds, safety cars and the look of cars. I understand that F1 at times never opens its doors fully open.

I remember Martin and James and their commentary was so useful that you knew everything around you, you knew when to react to certain situations.

With an engineer, he is like a nuisance to you as not every lap he needs to come on the radio, i remember Martin say that some drivers like Kimi only want just to drive and less talk on the radio, so commentary and a little of engineers input would have made sense.

I remember that when I used to play the sim there was something called “camber”, which I never really understood. I know it has to do with the wheels vertical angle, but I never knew what is its purpose. Can you give me a hint?

And… are there any instructions anywhere as to how to use the suspensions settings? (hard or soft; longer or shorter). I’d like to buy the new game. It has to be really cool.

You blokes should just play rFactor. The best F1 mod of all IMHO is CTDP F1 2005 and there are many other mod from many years going way back to way back when… all for the one low price with literally hundreds of tracks available. rFactor2 will be here Q2 2010.

I have to say. I hold no hope for this game. If it is indeed utilising CodeMasters extremelt flawed ‘ego engine’ we can expect another failed title from CodeMasters. In a world of super realistic simulaters like GranTurismo 5 prologue and the immenent release of the full game, its hard to understand CodeMasters strategy of releasing unsophisticated, arcady racers. I’ve played a little of Colin McRae and part two. Frankly they are appauling games by comparison to their competitors and CodeMasters will do well to stop relying solely on the selling power of a franchise and start looking at its production methods and quality standards.
As a games company they have let their loyal customer base down time and time again. And in some cases even deceived people to generate large innitial sales, knowing full well that their product was unfinished at the time of release. Just look at their title ‘Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising’

As a long time racing and gaming fab codemasters have always produced fantastic games…. Recently grid and dirt have been stunning examples of how racing can be done….

I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing gran turismo moved on and became more vibrant rather than the flawed graphical update of the second game, it’s got a lot to prove considering what’s been announced, developed, lanched and enjoyed since it was named as a ps3 launch title

They really need to include safety cars into the games thought to make it more real. I remember cars barging into the run off at Silverstone in GP4 and still being able to fly past, then a lap later they were gone!

Would be great, having to manage your speed, prepare for a restart and look after your tyres – and if you’re leading, keep the pack behind and maintain distance from the safety car.

I hear this new one has a manual pit lane speed limiter – something else I thought F1 games should include, so very happy about that!

Guys the greatest F1 game ever is and i think will remain for some time Grand Prix legends.
GPL was set in the 1967 season. no aero no wing, no slicks, just 400hp, 500kg cars on the tracks of the day. the old Spa circuit, nurburging etc. The best most realistic sim ever. Diablolically hard to master and you have to learn to steer with the throttle, no other sim has ever come close…
just Google GPL and you will see a whole community dedicated to this game. You can now download it for free and there a many other tracks that have been designed by other fans. if you are a Race sim fan you must see this…